While Ms
Dromgoole has been severely criticized for her articles on the Malungeons in the
1890s, they do provide us with much valuable information that cannot be found
anywhere else. Many of todays articles and books are being written by
people who have never even visited the locations of the Malungeons and I have
seen many things written in the last ten years that far exceed the 'bad things'
Ms Dromgoole wrote. Yet they go unchallenged and for the most part aren't
mentioned but here and there on a few blogs or message
boards.

Some writers have said Ms Dromgoole lost her clerking job because she
'wrote against the Malungeons' this article dated September 1889 was written
almost a year before her first article on the Malungeons was published.
Either there is an earlier article or Ms Dromgoole lost the election because of
the story on 'Old
Hickory.'

THE
EVENING NEWSSan Jose Mercury Friday- Sept
20, 1889

Miss Will Allen
Dromgoole, says report, is a literary lady who has cut her official throat with
her little pen. Some of her recent magazine sketches of life in the
Tennessee Mountains carried a sting to the denizens of that section, and when
Miss Dromgoole recently sought an election to a Senate clerkship, a big,
rough-bearded Solon from an up county arose and roared out; "She wrote
agin the mount'ns! I war be known'st ter it, and I'm agin her!" The
Senate sat petrified and Miss Dromgoole incautiously giggled. It sealed
her fate. Another hill-country legislator was hoisted to his feet by his
indignant colleagues to second the objection. He did it tersely and
effectually. "She 'lowed the wimmen folks went b'arfoot an' ther men
talked a diurlec. I'm agin anybody as is agin the mount'ns." The
issue was joined and on the ballot being taken Miss Dromgoole was
beaten.

Born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee., Oct. 26, 1860, she was the
daughter of John Easter and Rebecca Mildred (Blanch) Dromgoole; granddaughter of
the Rev. Thomas and Mary Dromgoole and of Ezekiel and Mildred (Cook) Blanch of
Virginia; and great-granddaughter of Edward Dromgoole of Sligo, Ireland, and
Rebecca Walton.

She was graduated from the Clarksville female academy,
Tennessee in 1876, studied law with her father although the laws of Tennessee did not allow
women to practice in those days. She also studied at the New
England School of Expression in Boston.

She was appointed
assistant engrossing clerk of the Tennessee house of representatives in 1883,
was elected engrossing clerk of the state senate, 1885; was re-elected in 1887;
served an extra term, and was defeated for re-election in 1889.

Her first
published story appeared in Youth's Companion in 1887, while she was serving as
engrossing clerk, "Fiddling His Way to Fame" was about the Tennessee Governor,
Bob Taylor. She had a best selling novel in 1911, "The Island of the Beautiful,
" taught school in Tennessee one year, and one year in Temple, Texas and founded
the Waco Women's Press Club. During World War I, Ms Dromgoole was a warrant
officer in the United States Naval Reserve, lecturing to sailors on patriotic
topics.

She is the author of: Heart of Old
Hickory (1891); The Farrier's Dog and His Fellow (1897);
Further Adventures of the Fellow (1898); Valley Path (1898); Three Little
Crackers (1898); Hero Chums (1898); Rare Old Chums (1898); A Boy's [p.312]
Battle (1898); Cuich, and Other Tales of Tennessee (1898); A Moonshiner's Son
(1898); Harum-Scarum Joe {1899); and The Battle on Stone River (1899); besides
many magazine articles. Before her death she had published thirteen books,
7,500 poems and 5,000 columns of essays, making her one of the most prolific of
Tennessee writers.

From the preface of HEART OF OLD HICKORY by B.O.
Flower

''As the personality of a famous writer is always interesting,
I propose to give a brief descriptive sketch of the little woman of whom the
South has just reason to be proud before speaking of this book. She is small of
stature, fragile in appearance, intense in her nature, and of a highly-strung
nervous organism. I seldom care to dwell on the ancestry of an individual, as I
think that sort of thing has been greatly overdone, and I believe with
Bulwer that " not to the past but to the future looks true nobility, and finds
its blazon in posterity." And yet the ancestry of an individual may sometimes
prove a helpful and interesting study.

I have frequently noticed in the writings of authors who
exhibit great versatility, no less than in the lives of individuals who seem to
present strikingly contradictory phases of character, the explanation of these
phenomena in their ancestry. In the case of Miss Dromgoole we find an
interesting illustration of this nature. Her great-grandfather Edward Dromgoole
emigrated from Sligo, Ireland ; as he had accepted the tenets of Protestantism
and his people were strong Catholics, it was unpleasant for him to longer remain
in his native land. He became a prominent pioneer Methodist minister in
Virginia. One of his sons, a well-known orator, represented the Petersburg
district in congress. Her maternal grandfather was of Danish extraction, while
her great-grandmother on her father's side was an Englishwoman, and her
great-grandfather on the mother's side married a French lady.

Here
we have the mingling of Irish, Danish, English, and French blood, with some
striking characteristics of each of these peoples appearing perceptibly in the
person and works of Miss Dromgoole. Though she repudiates the English * in her
blood, her sturdy loyalty to high principles and an ethical strength wedded to a
certain seriousness, almost sad- * In a personal letter Miss Dromgoole says : "
I do not know what I am. I claim the Irish and the French. I feel the Danish
blood in my veins at times, but the cold blood of the English I
repudiate."

HER
FAMILY

John Easter Dromgoole, father of
Will Allen served as Mayor of Murfreesboro during the Civil War and refused to
surrender the city making it one of a few that were actually 'captured.'
In 1870 he was a member of the Tennessee Constitutional Convention that
dealt with many of the 'free people of color' laws, along with John Netherland
who had represented many of the Melungeons in court.

William Ewing Beard
(1873-1950), son of Richard Beard and Will Allen's sister Maria
Dromgoole was soldier, journalist, war correspondent, naval
historian and long-time officer of the Tennessee Historical Commission and
member of the Tennessee Historical
Society. His grandfather Beard was head of the theological
department of Cumberland University, Lebanon, Tennessee where one of the early
settlements was called 'Malungeon Town' in 1850.

George C. Dromgoole was
married in Rutherford County, Tennessee to Nancy Gibson,
daughter of Malcolm B. and Sarah Jameson Gibson. Malcolm B. Gibson was
born 1815 in Alabama and married 1833 in Lawrence County, Alabama.
Although I have searched many years I have not been able to identify the
ancestry of Malcolm Gibson but is it possible Will Allen had knowledge of the
Malungeons before she went to Newmans' Ridge or even 'distant
relatives'?

Perhaps the most important things that came out of the articles Ms Dromgoole
wrote was not what she wrote but what
it prompted others to write.

When Will Allen Dromgoole published her first
two articles on the Melungeons in 1890 a series of Letters to the Editor
appeared. Two of them stand out as they appear to be written by two very
credible gentlemen who resided at Lebanon, Wilson County, Tennessee in
1850.

In
the AMERICAN of Sept. 15, 1890 Dan W. Baird wrote
of the Malungeons, in part, as follows:

"Several families are still to be found in
Smith, Wilson, Rutherford, and Davidson Counties. There is nothing in their
family names to give the student of ethnology a clue to their
origin.In a
locality in Wilson County known forty years ago as 'Malungeon Town', the most common names were Richardson,
Nickens, and Collins. In Rutherford County not far from Lavergne, the principal
Malungeons were Archers, Lanterns, and Blackmans. One of the latter family has
sold fish in the north end of the market house in this city (Nashville) for many
years, and some of the same family reside a few miles out on the Nolensville
Turnpike. "A pretty fair speciman of the Malungeon tribe is a young fellow named
Bernice Richardson, now serving a life sentence in the state prison for
self-confessed complicity in the murder of M.T. Bennet of Lebanon.

From Saundra Keyes Ivey;

''Baird expresses surprise that writers of
recent article on the Melungeons had not 'referred to the state records or
called on any of the many old citizens still living who are familiar with all
that is known of the history of the people called Malungeons......

........... And it is then that Baird
writes of the Sevier letter and cites the speech of McKinney. He goes on to
write; "All they seem to know of themselves is that they are 'Malungeons' and of
Portuguese descent. These two points
have been agreed upon for more than three-fourths of a century, and it appears that any one who undertakes
to investigate the matter will be forced to accept them as established facts.
"

Dan
Baird was founder of the SOUTHERN LUMBERMAN in 1881 in Lebanon, Tennessee
and later moved to Nashville, in connection with publishing the
magazine. He was an early contributer to Tennessee history writing of the
Civil War, some of his stories can be found in the SOUTHERN HISTORICAL SOCIETY

In a later exchange
written by R. M. Ewing to the Editor;DAILY AMERICAN Sept 21, 1890 p. 4.

R. M. Ewing, wrote that when he attended law
school at Lebanon Tennessee, in 1851: "
there was a colony of people
residing within a few miles of Lebanon who were locally, and so
far as I know generally, called Malungeons. They seemed to be a hard working, harmless,
inoffensive people, a dark red or copper color, and jet black, straight hair...
these people
claimed to be of Portuguese descent.

The 1850 census shows R. M. Ewing
[Randall M. Ewing] in the Ninth Civil District of Williamson County,
Tennessee -- Student at Law. The Cumberland University School of Law was located in Lebanon,
Tennessee.

In the The
Advance-guard of Western Civilization: Life of James Robertson and
Early James Roberts Gilmore writes that "Randall M. Ewing is one of "three gentlemen
who are undoubtedly better acquainted with the early history of the Southwest
than any others now living"

This poem speaks to the
responsibiltiesthat our generation
owes to our descendants to come.THE BRIDGE
BUILDER

An old man, going a lone highway,Came at the evening
cold and gray,To a chasm, vast and deep and wide,Through which was
flowing a sullen tide.The old man crossed in the twilight dim-That
sullen stream had no fears for him;But he turned, when he reached the other
side,And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," said a fellow
pilgrim near,"You are wasting strength in building here.Your journey
will end with the ending day;You never again must pass this way.You have
crossed the chasm, deep and wide,Why build you the bridge at the
eventide?"

The builder lifted his old gray head."Good friend, in the
path I have come," he said,"There followeth after me todayA youth whose
feet must pass this way.This chasm that has been naught to meTo that
fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.He, too, must cross in the twilight
dim;Good friend, I am building the bridge for him."